cool rain

Cool rain in August, after the sun and heat of July.  The bay a sheet of dull gray metal, the sky a perfect match to it.  Now it gets dark again at night, and the days slip steadily toward autumn.  The wild blueberries are ripe and now almost over-ripe.  A bumper crop two years in a row, with warmth and moisture all timed perfectly for them, in alternate waves since early summer.

I love the return of darkness to our nights, and of weather that makes a sweater feel good in the morning.  I will miss the plunges into lake water, naked and dusty and sweating after work, but given the choice I will take the coolness.  The sauna will come back into use again by September, making a skinny-dip into the deepest lake in the Western Hemisphere thinkable for a couple more months.

The mosquitoes have eased, after a summer that – again like last summer – never really saw them get going.  One of our girls remarked wisely that when we get another normal summer of bugs around here, maybe next year, maybe the year after, it is going to be a rude awakening.  Yes indeed.

And the lake is up –the lake which we thought was perhaps down for good – conspiracy theories of our water robbed by the tar-sands denizens of Fort McMurray all swept aside at least for now, as the lake comes up and steadily keeps rising, even into early August.  It is matched by the river, full to its banks and flowing fast and white as it drops over the final miles into the lake.

I didn’t set out to say so much this morning.  Cool rain in August, after the sun and heat of July.  The bay a sheet of gray metal, the sky a perfect match to it.